Death and geraniums
Mar. 14th, 2004 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xaaraToday I found out that the brother of a volleyball teammate of mine died in a random accident. He was in a tree fort and somehow became entangled in a rope, which pulled him off the platform and effectively hanged him. His body wasn't found until late at night, when his mother, having called all the neighbors and the police, went out with a flashlight and saw him still dangling from the tree. Thinking about it still gives me the creeps - I can't imagine myself in his mother's position. To walk outside in the middle of the night to find your child dead? It must've been indescribably horrible.
I couldn't stop visualizing the scenario in my head; it was relentless all day today. God, I feel awful for his mother. Things like that don't happen to regular people, do they? People don't die until they're old enough, right? What happens when you die and you haven't finished your research project or answered the guy who asked you to the dance or read all the books on your bookshelf? What happens when your life's not done, but it's over all the same? What about the people you only know over the Internet, or the friends you only write once or twice a year? Would you just disappear?
I went to the garden shop to pick out some flowers to bring to the funeral. I hate buying dead flowers for the dead - it's just too depressing - so I picked out a small geranium in a bright red pot. Then, because I was unhappy, I bought three more geraniums for me. I love geraniums, because they bloom so brightly and don't really require much care except the occasional pruning, and because they look happy. They smile at the sun and when people come up the front walk they always comment, "What beautiful geraniums! They brighten up the place."
So now my geraniums are the Matt geraniums and the one that I'm taking to the funeral with me has one bright bloom on it. It will be a contented flower adrift a plethora of cut flowers already wilting from their forced gaiety. Maybe it will be a symbol.
A symbol. A symbol of what?
I couldn't stop visualizing the scenario in my head; it was relentless all day today. God, I feel awful for his mother. Things like that don't happen to regular people, do they? People don't die until they're old enough, right? What happens when you die and you haven't finished your research project or answered the guy who asked you to the dance or read all the books on your bookshelf? What happens when your life's not done, but it's over all the same? What about the people you only know over the Internet, or the friends you only write once or twice a year? Would you just disappear?
I went to the garden shop to pick out some flowers to bring to the funeral. I hate buying dead flowers for the dead - it's just too depressing - so I picked out a small geranium in a bright red pot. Then, because I was unhappy, I bought three more geraniums for me. I love geraniums, because they bloom so brightly and don't really require much care except the occasional pruning, and because they look happy. They smile at the sun and when people come up the front walk they always comment, "What beautiful geraniums! They brighten up the place."
So now my geraniums are the Matt geraniums and the one that I'm taking to the funeral with me has one bright bloom on it. It will be a contented flower adrift a plethora of cut flowers already wilting from their forced gaiety. Maybe it will be a symbol.
A symbol. A symbol of what?
